


Caline's Third Law

by silveradept



Series: Rigging Random Chance [4]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste Knows, Breather Episode, Close-Up Magic, Creative Methods of Probability Manipulation, Gen, Mathematical Probabilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 06:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20990420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: Marinette is still trying to figure out the secret to the compliments exercise. Adrien's perspective gives new insights, but he wants to be sure. Caline doesn't give him any conscious confirmations to his speculation.





	Caline's Third Law

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlexSeanchai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexSeanchai/gifts).

As µcat had explained it, at the quantum level, systems of states existed together in the same space, with varying probabilities of how they would resolve assigned to how influential each possible state was on the system as a whole. Only when a system was observed would the superposition of states resolve into something that can be measured.

Adrien wasn't entirely sure how this particular situation would resolve, to be honest, but the longer it went on, the more he worried that the results would be explosive. And while µcat could deal in hypotheticals, Adrien had to deal with more than a few collapsed states.

"Something's still not right," Marinette was grumbling to Max as they headed out for lunch. "It's still too perfect. Just yesterday, Chloé snubbed Sabrina for group work right before the exercise, and somehow _Alix and Kim_, who both wouldn't give Chloé the time of day unless they had to, ended up picking Chloé to give Sabrina a compliment! It's supposed to be random, I know, but that's too convenient!"

Max shrugged. "Randomness sometimes looks like patterns, Marinette. Unless there's evidence of tampering, it violates Occam's Razor to assume there is."

"You're kidding, right?" Marinette said, staring at her phone.

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that. We checked the data twice before we sent it to you."

"This can't be random. Each student in the class gave and received exactly one compliment this month, That's impossible."

Max sighed. "Not quite, Marinette. It's _possible_ this result could be achieved by random selection, and that, mathematically, it's no more likely than any other combination of thirty random drawings."

"But you don't believe this is random at all?"

A long pause hung in the air before Markov replied. "I have read that humans are pattern-spotting creatures, Marinette, and sometimes see things that do not exist. Given the evidence that members of your class are attempting to manipulate the daily results, it is possible that someone may also be attempting to manipulate the long-term results as well."

"Thanks, Markov," Marinette said, brightening. "Good to know that someone believes me."

"I do not have the capability to believe, Marinette," Markov corrected her. "I can hypothesise from data, but I must follow some form of logic to reach decisions."

Marinette waved Markov off and went to sit next to Alya. Max and Markov joined Nino and Adrien at their table.

"What was Marinette talking about?" Adrien asked.

"She asked us to keep track of Mme. Bustier's compliments exercise to see if there were any irregularities in who received and gave compliments," Max replied.

"She seems pretty convinced there are irregularities, dude." Nino said.

"Marinette has observed several of her classmates engaged in activities attempting to influence the selection of the compliments exercise," Markov noted. 

"Wait," Adrien furrowed his brows. "Didn't she say we had a perfect distribution?" Max nodded. "Despite active interference?" Max nodded again. "That sounds awfully suspicious. I know it's still mathematically possible to achieve, but logically, if people are trying to interfere with the selection, shouldn't we be able to track who's winning by the slant in the results?"

"If we started from an assumption that a perfect distribution was the desired result, Adrien, any deviations from that could be taken as evidence of the relative success of any given interference attempt." Max said. "However, since each interference attempt has the potential to cancel or supercede a different interference attempt, determining the success of any given interference is much more difficult. The closer our observational data is to perfect knowledge of the situation, the more confidence we can have in the correctness of our results."

µcat had also suggested the idea that the act of observation was also an act of interference in the superposition state. Choosing something to measure made it more likely for the superposition to collapse into a state where it could be measured by what was chosen to measure it. Our biases acted on quanta and made them into measurable reality, Adrien had concluded. And then, because Adrien couldn't resist, µcat had posted the clip from Tiny Toon Adventures about cartoon physics and walking on the air.

It was hard to approach the compliments dilemma without some form of bias getting baked in, because everyone in the class was involved, it seemed, in trying to shift the results in a direction they wanted it to go. Which made the even distribution of compliments given and received highly suspicious, because there were a _lot_ of people doing their very best to make sure Chloé never got anywhere near a compliment. 

When they weren't telling her what they thought of her more directly, that is. Sabrina had "accidentally" opened a locker door into Chloés face after Chloé's snub to her earlier. Juleka hadn't bothered with pretense, just walked up to Chloé with murder in her eyes and flattened her. Adrien had yet to find out the reason why from either of them, which made it all that much stranger. Chloé was usually very loud about why she thought she'd been hurt.

(He'd had to talk Marinette down from "giving Lila a real reason to cry" after the near-disaster with the Scarlet Moth akumas and Lila appearing on a photoshoot with him. He wasn't entirely sure Marinette wouldn't take the next excuse that offered itself, but that was a problem for another time.)

"Hey, Max, can I look at that spreadsheet again?" Adrien said.

Max brought it back up on his laptop screen.

"Huh, that's interesting," Adrien said. "That day, where I complimented Juleka, wasn't that the day after she'd laid Chloé out? And this one was Nathaniel giving Sabrina a compliment after the 'unfortunate' locker door incident, right?"

Max nodded. "That's right. And here's the day that Mylène gave Marinette a compliment on the first day back after her temporary explusion." 

" 'Three times is enemy action,' " Adrien mused. "If everyone were chaotically trying to manipulate the results, how likely would it be that these three were so well-timed?"

"No less random than any other," Max stated. "If someone were actually succeeding at manipulating the results, wouldn't they try to make a more suitable pairing? A compliment from Rose would have been better than me for Juleka, Sabrina would have benefited the most from a compliment from Chloé, and you would have been picked for Marinette."

Adrien thought about protesting, but Max was right about Marinette. "What if someone were trying to hide their attempts?"

"What?" Max said, confused.

"Say someone is manipulating the compliments, but they don't want to draw too much attention to themselves. Wouldn't it make sense for them to be imperfect so nobody but the paranoid would suspect they were doing it?"

"It's certainly possible," Max replied, frowning, "but trying to prove that, Adrien, would require knowing where the needle was in the haystack. Someone planning well enough to seem only partially competent at what they were doing has probably anticipated even the paranoid in their plans."

"You're right," Adrien said. "I still think Marinette is on to something, though. Even though it's all mathematically possible, it doesn't feel right."

Max hid the spreadsheet. "Feelings, unfortunately, do not usually count as evidence," he said. 

"Yeah," Adrien said, still thinking about it. Seeing the paused video on Max's screen, he gestured at it. "What are you watching, Max?"

"It's a very interesting program where illusionists and magicians perform their best work in front of two legends of the profession, who get to see it exactly once and must determine the method or mechanic the illusion rests upon. It's very interesting to watch." 

"Oh, I think I've seen this show before!" Adrien said. "Do they sometimes have to speak in really weird code so that they don't reveal how it works to the public at large?"

"Yes!" Max said. "Would you like to watch it with me?"

"Yeah," Adrien said. "I think it'll be enlightening."

* * *

"Mme. Bustier," Adrien said casually, when they had closed the door, "how long were you a stage illusionist?"

"That's a strange accusation to make," Caline replied. She'd thought Adrien had asked to see her for something regarding schoolwork or the permissions for school trips that he was apparently having significant trouble getting back signed from his father. Instead, he'd opened with what, by all rights, should have been a non-sequitur.

"It is, isn't it?" Adrien said, tossing a Euro coin between his hands. "These days, though, everything seems to be getting on the Web, even the kinds of things that would otherwise be in long-forgotten tape archives. New shows sometimes spark an interest in classic performances."

Adrien snatched the coin out of the air, then opened his hands to show they were empty. He'd done a fairly impressive vanish on the coin, given the short sleeves he was wearing, but he needed to be more believable about where the coin was for her not to notice the other part of the exchange.

"I saw a video from a fan of "The Miraculous Caline", a stage illusionist from Québec that was very popular a decade or two ago." 

Adrien smiled, fishing the coin back out of his pocket. "It's kinda weird finding videos of your teacher on the Web, Mme. Bustier, even if your teacher is doing some really cool illusions."

"Are you sure that this person didn't just look like me?" Caline said suspiciously. "It's a big coincidence, but it's not unheard of for two people to have the same first name and look alike."

"I agree," Adrien said, "and in any other situation, I probably would think of it as a neat coincidence, but Marientte's tearing her hair out trying to figure out what's going on with the compliments exercise, and giving her some closure might help." 

Oh. Of course. It made much more sense now.

"Oh. That's very nice of you, Adrien, but why does Marinette think there's anything wrong with the compliments exercise?" 

"It's too perfect," Adrien replied. "That's a pretty big tell."

Caline relaxed a bit more. Adrien was doing a favor for Marinette, and if she sent him back with enough of the truth, he'd help Marinette stop looking so hard. She'd thought the talk they'd had earlier had been enough, but Marinette was dogged in her pursuit.

"I know you're observant, Adrien," Caline said, "so I'm sure you've seen your classmates trying to put their own mark on the exercise."

Adrien nodded. "It's pretty hard to miss Alix shifting seats. Or Kim performing a Chat Noir impression."

"So, yes, occasionally I have to reset the slips in the bowl when one or another classmate tries to remove or replace what's there. If it would help Marinette, she could look at the materials and put the slips into the bowl herself." Caline smiled at Adrien. Having someone to help sort out the mess the class was making of her compliments slips and to see if she couldn't catch anybody cheating would free up time for Caline that she could use elsewhere.

"There's more to it than that, though," Adrien said. "Because there are a couple of times where I thought I knew what was going to happen last week, and it didn't turn out that way at all. The only thing I can think of is that I was watching the wrong person." 

"It's hard to keep your eye on everything that's suspicious," Caline ventured, sighing. "I don't achieve it as often as I would like, and sometimes that produces potentially dangerous situations." Akumas were always dangerous, and that was before having to fill out all the paperwork for them. Caline was pretty sure she was the only one who had filled out akuma report templates for all of her students to ease the amount of time she spent typing them up. 

Adrien nodded sympathetically. "As I was watching this documentary about The Miraculous Caline, it mentioned that while she could have a great career in stage illusions, her true calling was in close-up magic. From what I've seen and read, close-up magic is a lot harder to perform well, and it's a lot easier to spot when your audience understands the trick." Adrien shrugged, and vanished the coin again. "Would you like to make a wager, Mme. Bustier?"

"I don't gamble, and certainly not with students," Caline said. Adrien wasn't wrong about anything so far, and getting caught in a forfeit situation was not on Caline's to-do list for today.

"Okay," Adrien said. "I would have lost the euro anyway, because I'm pretty sure you know exactly where it is right now."

"And why is that?" Caline asked.

"You've been watching my hands carefully this entire time, and your eyes occasionally flick over to where I've hidden the coin."

She'd been watching his hands, he'd been watching her _eyes_. Caline had known Adrien was observant, but she hadn't figured out he was devious, too. His innocent act had fooled her completely. Caline wondered how much of this trait came from his father.

"So, since there's no bet," Adrien said, "I can't draw you in with a double-or-nothing revenge and then proceed to describe for you all the times in the last week you've manipulated the results of the compliments exercise."

"You're confusing me with your classmates," Caline said, hoping it would remind him that they'd been over this ground before without anything useful coming of it.

"I don't think I am," Adrien said coolly. "But I also don't see a reason to say what the truth is, apart from making Marinette stress less. I think the class enjoys the challenge, and would feel cheated if they knew how little influence they actually have."

Adrien flashed his model grin at Caline, one that she realized now looked much more like the Chesire Cat than a empty-headed teenager, and headed to the door. Caline thought about following him, but stayed seated.

"If I'm right about you, Mme. Bustier," he said, turning back to her, "I think you'll enjoy the challenge of trying to make me believe that you're just our teacher, instead of an illusionist that gave up her career and moved to France to teach students for unclear reasons." 

Adrien waved to her as he left the classroom.

"Saint-ciboire de tabarnak," Caline quietly swore to the empty room. Marinette and Adrien working together would be a formidable team, on par with the ease that Ladybug and Chat Noir worked with each other. If she wanted to maintain the effectiveness of the compliments exercise, she would have to stop being so clever about it. It would make things less fun for her, but she could let a little bit of randomness back in to keep the mystery alive. Just so long as it didn't get in the way of making sure the class didn't explode in a shower of purple (or red) butterflies.

**Author's Note:**

> µcat can be read as "mew-cat", which is how Adrien intended it (AlexSeanchai is who introduced me to the pun), even if it can also be read as "moo-cat", which, if Adrien knew about Discordians, he might say is also an acceptable way of saying it. 
> 
> The magic show, if you're curious, is called Fool Us, and the two magicians are self-proclaimed carnival trash and his publicly silent partner.


End file.
